1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an illumination or light device and system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a solid state light device and system that may replace current high intensity directed light sources.
2. Background Art
Illumination systems are used in a variety of applications. Home, medical, dental, and industrial applications often require light to be made available. Similarly, aircraft, marine, and automotive applications often require high-intensity illumination beams.
Traditional lighting systems have used electrically powered filament or arc lamps, which sometimes include focusing lenses and/or reflective surfaces to direct the produced illumination into a beam. Conventional light sources based on powered filament or arc lamps, such as incandescent or discharge bulbs, radiate both heat and light in 360 degrees. Thus, for vehicular headlight applications, the reflecting/focusing/collecting optics used in a conventional headlight must be designed and/or specially treated to withstand the constant heating effects caused by the high intensity (and high heat) discharge bulbs. In addition, these conventional headlights require sophisticated reflection optics to provide an industry requirements-based illumination output pattern.
Some current alternative approaches use a package of high power LEDs as the light source. The light emitted by such a source is directed with the aide of focusing optics into a single optical waveguide, such as a large core plastic optical fiber, that transmits the light to a location that is remote from the source/sources. In yet another approach, the single fiber may be replaced by a bundle of individual optical fibers. These present systems are inefficient, with approximately 70% loss of the light generated in some cases. In multiple fiber systems, these losses may be due to the dark interstitial spaces between fibers in a bundle and the efficiencies of directing the light into the fiber bundle.